Saturday, January 30, 2016

“Racism
as a political weapon wielded by elites against the 99 percent,
nonwhite and white alike.”
[The
Nation].

Growth
Spurt:
The rousing economic recovery that prompted Yellen and the Fed to
begin raising
interest rates
in order to keep inflation in check turned out to be a disapointing
4Q15 GDP growth rate of 0.7% (subject
to downward
revision),
mostly because the main driver of the US economy, consumer
spending, wasn't. But never fear, those captains of capitalism
on Wall
Street reacted to weakening GDP growth (and thus weakening
profits) by jumping upwards because they see slower (or no more)
interest rate hikes and the possibility of even more free money!

Asked
And Obvious:
Expressing her dismay over the “shockingly weak” punishments that
have been visited on Wall Street's corporate criminals, Elizabeth
Warren asked
“Will
those who led the financial system into crisis ever face charges?”
No.
Next question please.

On
Wards:
CO2 levels will reach 405 ppm within three years, at which time a
2°C rise in global temperature will be locked in and we can stop the
silliness about magic spells and salvation. At the current rate (and
there is no real world evidence that we are actually going to take
the cure) we will reach the 450ppm in about 20 years, locking in a
3°C rise.

Money
Talks:
Polling shows that Democrataic voters making less than $30,000 prefer
Sanders, while those making over $100,000 favor Hillary, who
personally favors making millions.

A
Little Off The Top:
Michigan Gov. Snyder's mostly redacted emails (dating back to 2014)
had this
nugget when discussing the brain damage children in Flint were
suffering from the lead in Snyder's cheap water: “It is just a few
IQ points. … It is not the end of the world.” But responding
quickly to the looming threat of evisceration, Snyder has appointed a
committee to study the problem and come up with “feasible actions
for upgrading Flint’s water system” by 2018. As long as it
doesn't involve actually replacing the lead pipes.

Another
Verse:
President Obama,
fresh
from victories in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, is now going to save
Libya from the Islamic State.

Charity
Clarity:
Trump's spokesperson Katrina Pierson, she who
called the President the “head Negro” and “a jihadi,”
when asked about where the money supposedly donated to veterans at
the Thursday night barn dance, first said “I'm sorry, I can't hear
you.” And then explained the money was “going to a Trump
organization” because they
couldn't find a veterans' group that would accept the money.

Borrowed:“Note
to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe,
racist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all
Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from
entering the U.S.”

Behavioral
Analysis Units:
Political campaigns - just like banks, health insurers and the NSA –
know far more about you than you think they do. They know that if
you like canned asparagus you probably oppose abortion... and so on.
They know what you buy and where you shop and what restaurants
you go to and what car you drive and the put all this together to
figure out how you will likely vote and how to capitalize on this, to
get you to vote for their doofus rather than some other doofus. But
they all are doing it, so relax and enjoy the attention.

Infrastructure:
The
top US Army General in Iraq says that the collapse of the Mosul Dam
is likely and will be “catastrophic”. What do you think will be
fixed first, the Mosul Dam or the Flint, MI water supply?

Best
Friends For Never:
The US government has reluctantly concluded that sentencing a
journalist
to life in prison for reporting on a regime's secret and illegal
arms supply to jihadists is reason to question that nation's
“commitment to democracy.” There
should be no question that Erdogan's Turkey is committed to to
ending democracy as fast as possible and letting Erdogan rule as an
absolute monarch, with no input from the masses. The
US should wash their hands of Erdogan and let him get back to killing
Kurds.

Progress:
Ecuador is auctioning off one-third of its remaining rainforest to
Chinese oil companies.

Very,
Very Secret:The claimed ISIS
super-duper Android based encryption system for exchanging messages
and instructions on how and when to destroy the west turns out to be
vaporware at best and most likely a hoax.

Good
Question:Jeremy Corbyn asked
David Cameron if ordinary people can pay the same rate of tax as
Google and Apple.

Robin/Spring:
Caterpillar, generally taken to be a good indicator of the global
economy's health, reports that its Q4 retail revenues fell by 23%
leading to a 111% collapse in operating profit – if profit is the
right word for a $114 million loss.

Hang
'Em High: The
governor of Maine, citing a constitutional right to carry arms, is
encouraging his citizens to “Load up and get rid of the drug
dealers.”

Horse/Cart:
In that China gets most of its electricity from incredibly dirty
coal-fired plants, using an electric car is up to five times worse
for the environment than driving a gas guzzler.

Short
On
The
Basics:
A group of ranchers in Utah have denounced federal control of their
lands. Actually, it's federal control of our lands; they are
supposed to be renting them
from us.

Circus,
No
Bread: Some
wonder if our freedoms will survive the current political season –
which assumes we have any such things left. Truth: your vote does
not matter. Hasn't for several decades. We do not have a democracy,
nor even a democratic republic. What we have is a choice of front
men (mostly men) chosen by and answerable to the economic élite.
But the entertainment beats
the tedious work involved in self-government.

Noted:
According to the IMF and World Bank, “these are bad times for oil
producers and their creditors.” Ah, understatement.

Prozak
In Every Pot:
The US Preventive
Services Task Force (an
“independent panel” loosely under Health and Human Services)
wants every American be screened for depression and put on a regime
of drugs, especially pregnant women, new mothers, and those with
pharmacy coverage in their health insurance.

Walls/Ears:“Wall Street’s
serial corruption and wealth transfer system is at the very heart of
wealth and income inequality in America. … the business model of
Wall Street is fraud.”

Faint
Praise: Jeremy
Spencer, an associate superintendent with the GA DOE, has been fired
after he explained that it was unfair to compare Finland's
educational achievements with Georgia's because Finland's students
were all white.

Gotcha!
While your
grab and run, gas station, and grocery store typically have a 2%
profit margin for providing you your gas, snacks and grub, the banks
behind the credit card you pay with make at least 2% for letting you
buy the stuff. Who is ripping you off, even if you pay cash? Ah,
but you knew that already.

Data
Stream: The
rich third of US households spend only
65% of their income,
investing the rest to
make even more. The bottom third end up spending more than they
make; that's how the system is designed.

Two
Forward, One Back:
While Bernie Sanders was at the White House trying to get Obama to
stay the hell out of the primary contest, Hillary was offering
Obama a seat on the Supreme Court if he'd keep pimping for her.

Asked
& Answered:
Why are the Iowa caucuses followed so closely when Iowa only has 6
electoral votes? Iowa is important mainly because the media and the
punditry say it is.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Long
Form: The
tens of millions
Americans who have been
working hard but getting nowhere have come to understand that the
system is rigged against them, and
they want it to change.
They are being given a choice between “an authoritarian
son-of-a-bitch who promises to make America great again by keeping
out people different from you” and “a political activist who
tells it like it is, who has lived by his convictions for fifty
years, who won’t take a dime of money from big corporations or Wall
Street or the very rich, and who is leading a grass-roots “political
revolution” to regain control over our democracy and economy.”
It will be an
interesting contest, unless Hillary
ends
up giving us more of the same.

Smokescreens:
The six
largest Too Big To Exist US banks operate 19 traditional banks and
hide the rest of their control of the US and its economy thorough
14,001 subsidiaries.

Totally
Profitable Partnership:
The biggest thing that the TPP will trade is jobs. It will simply
trade them away. Studies of the plan say that not only would it
result in the loss of
tens of thousands of
jobs in the US and Canada, but a net loss of jobs throughout the
twelve co-conspirators. It would also shrink both the US and
Japanese economies.

The
Home Team:
Republican Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense, says that the
Republican presidential candidates have a grasp of national security
issues that “would
embarrass a middle schooler.”

The
Easy Button:
Savants keep trying to figure out why US corporations are sitting on
so much cash when, for a hundred years and more they were net
borrowers. They borrowed to expand, they borrowed to develop new
products, they borrowed to acquire other companies. They didn't pile
up $1.9 trillion while borrowing money to buy back their own stock.
So what's going on? Pretty much it is the simple fear of failure –
they can't find customers for what they have, they can't find new
things that anyone would have the money to buy, they already own most
of the competition and they simply can't find anything useful to do
with the money except hunker down and hope they survive whatever
disaster is knocking at the door.

The
Essence: Danny
DeVito says we are a nation of racists. Danny is right. Our economic
system is based on racism. Our political system is based on racism.
Our social system is
based on racism. Our laws and our justice system is based on racism.
Never mind what we say,
look at what we do.

Nutshelled:
What, beside the obvious, should be drawn from the endorsements
Sanders gets from the membership of groups whose leaders continue to
bow to Hillary?

Munchies:
Rather like
our dogs, we are designed to eat whenever we get the chance. No, our
bodies don't know if we're hungry – or at least don't care. We'll
eat. And even when we are vaguely dieting we don't judge very well
how much we've eaten. Want to do a bit better? Then write it down.
Write it down before you eat it. And try to eat better tasting stuff
slowly enough to
appreciate it.

Practiced,
Not Perfected:
US Secretary of Defense Carter says that “We have 3,500 boots on
the ground’ in Iraq and ‘we’re looking for opportunities to do
more.” Doing more would include deploying more troops to Iraq. And
there's always Syria.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Futility:
For years, decades even, the US citizenry has become ever more
reluctant to waste time following politics and trudging off to pull a
lever for toady R
or toadyD,
having long since figured out that if democracy comes down to chosing
between the power elite's two nominees, then democracy is a hoax.
Along comes Bernie Sanders, who seems to think government by and for
the people might be a workable idea, and that a bit more government
paid
for by tapping the rich for by
reverting to Eisenhower-era
tax rates might be
a workable idea. Those who haven't seen any point to voting are
beginning to pay attention.

Say
Amen:The
easiest thing you can do to lose weight: avoid restaurants.

The
Longer View:
Some don't understand how “lower
oil prices can cause
a recession?” That's
because they are too tightly focused on the here and now to see the
operative cause and effect. The recession was not caused by low oil
prices, but by the high ones before the credit crash. Only creating
ever more credit (going consuming more and more of our tomorrows)
made the high priced, end-of-the-oil-era oil possible. The recession
that followed the credit crash (and that has been papered over,
rather poorly, by QE etc. but still persists)caused the low oil
prices. The lack of demand comes from our overwhelming debts. Take
a longer view of things.

Lost
and Found: The
contest between Hillary and Bernie is not really about who gets to
live in the White House, but whose White House it is. Will the
Democrats continue their slide into useless me-tooism as the right of
center standard bearer for polite Republicans, or will the party of
the people actually once again become the party of the people? Will
Sanders' campaign for
a more equal and secure economy based
on a stronger democracy
build networks of activists across constituencies and
across the country? Will the campaign create
a lasting movement that people will commit to and keep working at
and towards, even if the initial effort loses to Wall Street? Stay
tuned.

Twilight
Time? Saudi
Aramco's chairman flatly rejects any suggestion that a possible
initial public offering for as-yet unidentified parts of the company
would include Saudi oil reserves. Mainly because if it did they
would have to open their books for an independent verification of
their claimed reserves, something which they will never permit –
mainly because most of
their claimed reserves are unlikely to exist.

Duck
and Cover:
Records of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle show that only 5
of the 77 Catholic clergy identified as “likely sex abusers of
children” since the 1920's have ever been convicted of their
crimes. There are Roman Catholic 195 archdioceses/dioceses
in the US.

They're
Back: Insured
(by you, the US taxpayer) commercial banks and savings associations
are exposed to $274 trillion in
notional (face amount)
derivatives, and
five banks hold 93% of that amount: Bank of America, Citigroup,
Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan
Stanley. Just one of
these behemoths, Morgan Stanley, only survived the 2007 crash with a
$10 billion injection of funds from US, along with over $2 trillion
in below-market-rate loans. [And we know about this only because of
Bloomberg and Senator Bernie Sanders.]

Culture
File: While
The Donald jokes (?) that he “could shoot somebody in the middle of
Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters”, A
man in NC shot and killed a man who came thorough the blizzard to
help him and a
man in Arkansas shot and killed a firefighter who was trying to
help him. 'Cause guns make us free.

More
of the Same:
The exploiters, the extractors, the developers have discovered “a
billion dollar ocean” - the Arctic is open for business. What
could possibly go right?

Pax
Americana: As
the Republicans get ready to carpet bomb any Muslim that gets
restive, let us keep in mind just how peaceful are
the places we've
introduced to
democracy in the last decade or so: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria,
Yemen and Ukraine come quickly to mind. But our
efforts maintain peace
and freedom in
the US, where most of us spend 40 years working off our
debt to the banks for cars, houses, healthcare, and education. Sure
we work longer hours for less pay than most other developed nations
and send more of our fellow citizens to jail (and to death), but
we're patriots; we accept defeat as victory, debt-slavery as
freedom... Sorry,
Orwell was a bit more succinct.

Head
Fake: The
National Security Agency is siding with those who do not want 'back
doors' built into their electronic communications. No, they're not
advocating privacy, they are simply sure they can break whatever
encryption you have access to and want to fool you into thinking
you've got some privacy. You don't.

Fairly
Tale:
Commentators are beginning to suspect that herding is at play in the
stock markets. Really.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-
I -O - N : A
flock of second-tier Clintonian operatives and fellow-travelers has
begun calling Bernie Sanders a communist, claiming he wants to
dismantle Obamacare, warning that he would sacrifice
Israel to ISIS and proclaiming that he does “not believe in
capitalism.” None of this is true, but repeated often enough, but
given the trends in the polls, she's got to do something.

Budget
Cuts: Governor
Snyder has released his (totally redacted) emails in an attempt to
prove that poisoning the people of Flint
was supposed to be a
temporary measure that
would save about $5
million over two years. That
it has killed at least
10 people and loaded
the blood and brains of 10,000 children with lead was collateral
damage that should not be viewed as environmental
racism and should not be taken into consideration when looking at
the overall budget savings and ideological purity. Besides, Snyder
explains,
it was those damned lazy civil servants... and the (unelected)
political hack he let run the city.

Protecting
& Self-Serving:
A bill pending in New Jersey would keep the public from accessing
police videos from body and car cameras, as well as 911 calls.
Because what we don't know won't hurt them.

Theory
of the Crime:
California's AG is investigating Exxon Mobil to see if its decades
of lying about the dangers of global climate change and the degree
to which petroleum products were responsible constitutes fraud under
various securities laws requiring full disclosure of all relevant
information concerning the current and future prospects of the
company. Such as reducing the value of its reserves...

Mattress
Stuffing: Why
are American corporations sitting on $1.9 trillion in cash – after
all, traditionally corporations were massive borrowers, not
gargantuan hoarders. But then, corporations used to be optimists,
ever looking for new and better products to bring to market in order
to make profits for the stockholders instead of trying to find
tax-efficient ways to buy back their own stock as a way to feather
the CEO's retirement. But to be fair, maybe all these senior
executives are reluctant to invest because (1) they know the economy
sucks and will continue to do so as thus there are no profits to be
made and/or (2) they are sure the whole thing's going to come
tumbling down and “cash will be king.” Then there's the
possibility that it is just the herd instinct they are all following
each other's lead assuming that the guy in the lead knows what the
hell is happening. He doesn't.

Submit:
Eleven-year old girls must be taught to stay “pure” until they
trap a man, they must turn to their fathers whose job it is “to
protect their purity” and teach them to be subservient. Or so
emails from the Mesa Valley School District in Colorado claim, while
directing the young girls to a Wake Up Ministries website where they
could learn about the “gag reflex” that tongue-kissing prompts
and sign up for an indoctrination meeting. The school system said it
had reviewed the material and did not find it to be demeaning nor
religious propaganda.

Porn
O'Graph: Full
and frank disclosure, or water, water everywhere...

Friday, January 22, 2016

Angles
On The Head of a Pin, For Now:
An apparently impartial Harvard constitutional specialist says that
it is abundantly clear, especially for the strict constructionists,
that a “natural born citizen” means someone born within the
sovereign territory of the United States (except for children of US
public officials serving abroad). In 1789 founding father James
Madison said that the US used place of birth rather than parentage as
the defining criterion.
Senator Cruz was not born in the US. QED.

Bullseye:
“Good thing the market is composed of rational actors. Otherwise,
we might really be in trouble.”

If
Not Now, When?
Oregon's governor, along with a lot of the rest of us, wonders when
the federal government is going to do something about the group of
seditious outlaws in Eastern Oregon. Where are the SWAT teams, the
armored vehicles, Seal Team Six. Where are
our vaunted forces of
law and order to protect the public against an armed insurrection?

Vital
Signs: The
Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey report had both bad news and
good news. The bad news is that manufacturing activity in the US
remained negative. The good news was that it wasn't as bad as it
was the previous
month. The Department of Labor reported a 10,000 surge
in initial unemployment claims last week, the highest since last
summer but added a soothing “this is still a very low level” of
claims. Yep, under 300,000. Sounds good to me.

None
So Blind...
Billionaire Steve Schwarzmann, CEO of the Blackstone Group of
Thieves, says he simply cannot understand what a large portion of the
US electorate are so upset and angry about. “What,” he asks,
“has made the people so unhappy?”

Statistically:
At least since NAFTA, trade agreements have included Investor-State
Dispute Settlement clauses – a forced arbitration with the
arbitrator picked by the investor, not the state. Research shows
that overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of ISDS have been extra-large
international companies with more than $10 billion in annual revenue
and ultra rich individuals with net worth in the hundreds of millions
of dollars. The losers have been the people, who have to pay the
taxes to raise the money that is regularly awarded to the already
filthy rich.

Consider
the Source:
Former Official Wizard and Saviour of the Economy Helicopter Ben
Bernanke tells us not to worry about China's $28 trillion in debt
because it is “an internal problem.”

Preparations:
Our masters, gathered in Davos, are worried that robots and
automation and artificial intelligence will
upset the economy and threaten their profits. Yes, they
acknowledge with a brushing motion of the backs
of their hands, a few million of you will lose your jobs and not
find work ever again, but you won't be losing your dividends and they
will...

You
First: Plans
are afoot to turn the former WWII concentration camp on Mamula Island
off Montenegro into a luxury resort. But it will be done tastefully,
preserving the “historical value of the island” with a “memorial
room” mentioning those who were incarcerated and those who were
killed or died of starvation. There will also be memorial T-shirts
and coffee mugs.

Thursday, January 21, 2016

Way
Down South:
The zika virus, the one that leads to microcephaly
in babies, may have infected 700,000 people in Colombia, including at
least 560 pregnant women. Iceland's nice this time of year.

Turtles
and Hares:
A CNN/WMUR survey finds likely New Hampshire Democratic voters prefer
Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, 60% to 33%. No wonder the tone
is getting snippy. This might also explain
Krugman, Ezra
Klein and Jonathan
Chaitparroting
Hillary's
claim
that the Democrats will
have to settle for whatever crumbs the GOP will let them have
rather than standing up for the people. FiveThirtyEight
reports that “Donald Trump is really unpopular with general
election voters” and notes that Sanders is the only candidate from
either party who has a net-positive rating, while Trump is the most
unfavorable. Hillary ends up with an 8 point unfavorable rating,
which given her history isn't bad at all.

Ham
Sandwich:
Reports claim that the prosecutor never gave the Tamir Rice grand
jury an opportunity to indict the officer who killed the child.

Helpless:
Sarah Palin claims that her son's arrest on weapons and domestic
violence charges is President Obama's fault because Track came off
the tracks after being deployed to Iraq.

Free
Trade:
Independent economists examining the TPP conclude that it will free
about 450,000 people from their jobs in the US. In exchange the
country will get to give up much of its soverignty to make and
enforce laws that concern companies and profits. Go team.

Net/Net:
Scientists predict that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the
oceans than fish, and that's not counting the plastic in the fish.

Matthew
6:34: Trump
says he'll find a place for Palin in Washington. Or John 11:35.

Wish
I'd Said:
Rick Wilson, a consultant for establishment Republicans, says that
most of Trump's “are
childless single men who masturbate to anime. … These are not
people who matter in the overall course of humanity.”

Spousal
Privilege:
A judge has ruled that a Baltimore cop cannot be forced
to testify
against his fellow officers in the Freddie Gray murder case.

An
Apple A Day:
Over half of the world's supply of cobalt, an element essential to
lithium batteries, comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo where
it is mined by children under slave-like conditions. 'Like' this and
share with your friends.

Grooming
Tips:
The government of Tajikistan, in an attempt to curb radical Isalm,
is forcing 13,000 men to shave off their beards. They're
doing away with headscarves, too.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Definition,
Glut: The
impression that we are “drowning in a sea of oil” is not exactly
right. We have a bit too much capacity, true. The IEA says that the
world is producing about 99.5 million barrels a day (mbd) and using
about 97.5 mbd. Makes doing the math pretty easy – we've got about
1.5% too much oil right now. The gap is expected to grow a bit, with
demand growing about 1.2 mbd this year and production remaining about
1.5 mbd above demand, which will “put storage infrastructure under
pressure.” The glut will disappear, along with cheap gas at the
pump, once those in the worst financial shape (most likely those with
the most expensive to produce oil) drop out. Closing 2 mbd in
production would do the job. Don't expect volunteers.

Full
Disclosure:
The real question about the Saudi “plan” to sell part of Saudi
Aramco is not why they might want to do that – they've already
burned through 15% of their foreign reserves – but how much it
would be worth. A public offering would require complete and
detailed disclosure of their reserves – something they have
strongly resisted for decades. And most of the world suspects that a
fair percentage of the claimed 260 billion barrels are mythical.

Yes,
and No: Yes,
there is a grade of crude oil in North Dakota that is pretty much
worthless – it is “North Dakota Sour” and it is full of sulfur,
a thick and acidic sludge. But it is also not worth talking about,
unless you own part of the 15,000 barrel a day production. Exxon
spills more than that every day. Even if you include the production
of South Texas Sour ($13.25 a barrel) and Oklahoma Sour ($13.5o) all
you've got is an ignorable footnote.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Fine
Print: The
executive chairman of the World Economic Forum says that the
worldwide crash of commodities prices will spread “economic woe”
across the world sending a wave of immigrants to Europe that would
“eclipse today's refugee crisis.”

Say/Do:
After telling the debating society that she was serious about
cracking down on Wall Street she has scheduled a Wall Street
fundraiser for four days before the Iowa caucus. And why not,
they've already paid
her $2.9 million for chatting with them.

Message
In A... If you
buy a barrel of oil, have them drop it off in the barrel. The barrel
is worth more than the oil in it.

Words
Is Words: The
Japanese Foreign Minister says that the women from conquered
countries
who were forced to work as whores in Japanese Army-run brothels were
not sex slaves, they were just “comfort women.” Wonder if he'd
say the same thing if it'd been his mother.

Pants
Suit On Fire:
The Clintons – both Hillary and the little Ms – have been “less
than completely truthful” in their characterization of Sanders'
healthcare proposal.

Tidings
of Comfort
and
Joy: Speakers
at the World Economic Forum expect that robots, AI and automation in
the world's 15 leading countries will take over 5 million jobs.
There is a small and fleeting concern as to where these five million
former consumers will end up.

97
Pound Weakling:
The latest national polls show that Bernie would defeat either Trump
or Cruz, while Hillary would lose to Cruz. She may well lose to
Bernie before that.

Priorities:
Citigroup says its huge increase in quarterly profits was due to a
sharp drop in legal costs as they finish buying off prosecution for
various mortgage-related issues.

Spoon,
Gag Me With A:Marco Rubio says
he rushed out on Christmas Eve to buy a gun as “the
last line of defense between ISIS and my family.”

Monday, January 18, 2016

Is
the drop in the value of oil a diagnostic marker similar to a sudden severe drop in blood pressure?

Trump
This: Donald
says he is “self-funding” his entire campaign for dictator
president although he has only put up $100,000 of his own money so
far – while an aviation company he owns has been paid $723,000 so
far by his campaign – which reports $4 million in contributions so
far. He seems unclear on the distinction between self-funding and
funding himself.

The
Slide:For
those following along at home, the Atlanta Fed's guess about the US
Q4GDP growth has declined from 2.9% (Nov 2015) to today's 0.6%.

Off-Brand:
While we were watching
the daily gyrations
of the Dow 30 and
S&P 500, the Russel 2000 has fallen 23% from its peak. So far.

The
Peacemaker:
Explaining that the new regulations were a health and safety measure
and had nothing to do with any religion or religious practice,
Benjamin Netanyahu is
calling for a complete ban on the "unbearable
noise" Imams make
when calling the faithful to prayer.

Understatement:
“Small oil price
declines may be expansionary through usual channels, but really big
declines set in motion a process of forced deleveraging among
producers that can be a significant drag on the world economy.”

Closer
To Home:
PM David
Cameron has
authorized
an investigation into the
funding and other support various domestic extremist and jihadi
groups have received from Saudi Arabia. It was fine for the Saudis
to bankroll ISIS, but blowing up Bloomsbury is a bit cheeky.

Quoted:“The world is full
of nations and rulers that are fighting for bare survival. And things
like that don’t play out on a short term basis.”

Rewrite:
Tyler Cowen's
essay, Can economics
change your mind?would have been of more
interest if he'd asked “Can economists change their minds?”

Mulligan:
A week ago the Dallas Fed met with banksters and told them they
didn't have to mark their heavily impaired energy-sector loans and
investments “to market”
because that would make the banks look weak
and the
Fed
foolish. Is
that sound I hear a domino falling?

Choice
Multiples: The
US explained that two of its small naval craft ventured into Iranian
territorial waters due to (1) Iranian aggression, (2) unspecified
mechanical failure, (3) “inadvertently drifted into Iranian waters,
(4) navigation errors, (5) all of the above, one after the other.

Huh?
The self-centered and essentially clueless Uber passenger who was
videoed committing the crime of assault and battery is now suing the
driver for $5 million for recording the crime. His lawyer probably
offices with the bunch that think they can copyright
the names of our national parks.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

For
Your Consideration:
Is there any reason to suspect that any central banker anywhere in
the world, now or in the last twenty years or more, had or now has
the faintest idea what was going on? On what evidence?

Shadow
Boxing:
US transportation of goods by truck, rail, pipeline, waterways and
air has fallen y/y to the lowest since before the 2009 disturbance in
the force, and the Baltic Dry index has simply collapsed. One
of the reasons for the lack of freight might be that US industrial
production fell nearly 2% y/y and is collapsing at the fastest
rate since May of 2008 and only 76% of US industrial
capacity is being utilized.

Throat
Clearing: The
President of the NY Fed (speaking more or less for Yellen) now says
that instead of further increases in the prime rate the Fed may
have to cut
interest rates. Which should raise the question of negative rates
someday soon.

Advise
& Consent:The
Saudi foreign minister has
confirmed
that US and British military are present in the Saudi command and
control center that does the targeting for Saudi airstrikes
on women, children, schools and hospitals in Yemen. But, he claims,
they are only observers and do not get to pick the targets.

Asked
& Equivocated:
What degree of privacy will Americans give up for 'security'? For
convenience? Would they answer the same way if the question were
“How much government snooping in your private life...?” The
willingness to give up one's privacy seems directly related to how
realistic understanding one has of actual threats.

Report
Of The Commissioners:
The National Association of Counties reports that over 90% of the
counties in the US have not fully recovered from the recession.

Heel:
Mike Huckabee
says that poor Americans should be trained like dogs are, with
reqards for good behavior and punishment for bad behavior. And being
poor is bad behavior, shame, shame. The punishment would be his
proposed
national 10% sales tax, which would hurt the poor and shift the
rich's share of taxes to the middle class. Down boy.

Ground
Rules: Paul
Ryan Ryan says that
President Obama
“degraded” his
office by denouncing bigotry and those who encourage bigotry because
that is an attack on each of the Republican primary candidates.

Correlation:
There
are now almost twice as many hedge funds
as there are Taco
Bells, and Taco Bell
may be a better investment.

Making
America Great Again: “America achieved
its most rapid growth and technological progress ever during the
1950s and 1960s, despite much higher top tax rates and much lower
inequality than it has today.”

Clear
Sailing: The
US Navy is buying ships
that sail pretty well in good weather and fair seas. Less salubrious
conditions lead to the the bow collapsing or the ship rolling over.

Our Motto

Keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.